2 entries categorized "Location - Sahara"

Monday, June 13, 2011

A romantic novel of belonging and identity, The Salt Road by Jane Johnson immerses the reader in the world of a marginalised culture, the Sahara of the Tuaregs*(Kel Tamasheq/Kel Tagelmust). While the ingredients are those of a kitchen-sink melodrama, Johnson’s anthropologically detailed depictions of tribal life carry such esoteric allure that her fiction often – and beautifully – transcends predictability. Featuring an emotional mystery and a phenomenal Targuia protagonist whose journey along the proverbial and literal Salt Road of life and death is the strong heart of the story, Johnson’s novel offers exceptional thrills for armchair travellers.

A silver amulet inscribed with cryptic signs inspires a set of events that leads Isabelle Treslove-Facett on a climbing trip to Morocco. The accident that disrupts her plans plunges her into the midst of people and places that force her to examine why she has always felt an outsider, and what happened to change her from a free-spirited child to an adult constricted by fears.

In the Sahara, Mariata ult Yemma ult Tofenat of the Kel Taitok (Taituq/Taïtoq) is fiercely proud of her descent from TinHinan, the queen the Tuaregs revere as “The Mother Of Us All”. But the changes that sweep the Sahara are beginning to encroach on a nomadic lifestyle previously taken for granted, and when the freedoms traditionally guaranteed her as a Targuia become threatened, she embarks on a journey that will lead to passionate love and and violent tragedy.

Separated by time and distance, only when the right connection is made can either woman find the answers they seek.

The Salt Road epitomises the concept of place as character. A naturalised resident of Morocco, author Jane Johnson incorporates her observations of landscape and culture with a command of prose and technical skill that builds a dynamic, fully-realised world as opposed to a prettily described travelogue (a trait of the previous Sahara-set novel I posted about, Footprints In The Sand). The story grows organically out of the setting, a meshing that makes The Salt Road a heady experience for the fiction reader who relishes locales so vividly rendered they give documentaries a run for the money. The wealth of places that play a direct or indirect role does cry out for a map which unfortunately is not provided in my edition (Doubleday Canada hardcover, 2011); they include numerous locations in Morocco, Alger, Niger, Mauritania, and Mali. For example, by studying an ethnographic map of the Tuareg heartland as well as its distance to Morocco the true enormity of Mariata’s treks becomes much clearer. (While the shadowed areas on the map on the left indicate Tuareg areas in Mali and Niger, all names on the map starting with "Kel" denote Tuareg confederations.)

The plot opens with a multi-part mystery and evolves through dual storylines that are fitted together with great intricacy. The novel is structured in a way that presumably is intended to keep the reader in suspense about the connection between the amulet and the two principal protagonists until the end. A tinge of mysticism suggests possibilities related to time-slips or reincarnation. However, too much is telegraphed in the opening chapers, and when in addition close reading reveals clues that place Mariata in a specific time period, the veil of intrigue surrounding the plot is removed before the story has reached the halfway mark. It is therefore a credit to Johnson’s storytelling abilities that while the dénouement may be short in surprises she makes the journey there enthralling enough to be a satisfying end in itself. Moreover, anti-climactic or not, it is a neat - if a little breathless – conclusion that sweetly fulfills the story promise. (Unless, in concert with some of the reviews I scanned before acquiring my copy, you have been led by Johnson’s literate prose into believing that you are reading unsentimental literary fiction, in which case certain fairy-tale elements may drive you to feel the ending is tragic for all the wrong reasons.)

The novel’s set-up can be separated into three parts: Isabelle’s storyline, which is narrated in first person and after an intriguing start begins to read like generic women’s fiction; Mariata’s storyline – told in third person-point of view – which, were it to be detached, could easily function as a solid, multi-faceted novel in itself; and the mystery which forms a frame and joins the two halves together. Unfortunately, the contrast in interest and power between the storylines produces an effect similar to fitting a quality frame around a glowing original oil, then sticking in an inkjet print to complement the whole. On its own, there is nothing awfully wrong with Isabelle’s story. Yet compared to the vitality of the indomitable Mariata, Isabelle appears pouty and vapid, and the banality of her growth arc flattens a plotline that relies on coincidence and improbability to keep up with the excitement of the discovery-factor inherent in Mariata’s adventure-filled tribal life.

It seems the lot of Isabelle to be chastised throughout the story. Raised by parents who caused her to feel like an intruder and crushed her spirit, it is in the act of pursuing the one activity where she feels in control of her fears that she is dumped – painfully - into the lap of an alien culture she does not understand and that judges her for her Westernness every step of the way. (Cultural prejudice is a motif in this book full of confrontational characters, and not limited to any one group). With her horribly dysfunctional childhood (there is even more darkness to it than it as first apparent) and her initially unwilling pilgrimage of the soul, she should be as fascinating as Mariata. Her sense of self is deeply buried within a past she exerts all her power to forget, refusing to face how trapped it holds her until an accident makes her restless body, too, a prison. The gradual loss of various freedoms that forces her to re-examine her identity is an intriguingly conceived plotline. I only wish the rest of her character development had been as convincing. However, since her problems are largely blamed on Western selfishness there is no reason for her character to work on toxic personality traits. Instead, it is her awakening to the virtues of another culture that achieves her transformation. Now, my scepticism is certainly not directed against the idea that experiencing other cultures can have a transformative influence on a person. But Isabelle, a successful corporate tax accountant, turns out to be a frustratingly dim traveller whose personal insecurities leave her flailing and spineless in the face of adversity. There is a blatant stageyness to the way in which she is made to see the error of her ways (such as having chosen a job which involves finding tax loopholes for rich corporations that prey on the poor). Thus, when this wealthy woman gives away her luxury watch to a nomadic child to use as a plaything in a “poignant” scene that marks how she has progressed and started to re-evaluate what truly matters, this reader’s response was rather uncharitable.

Overall, the political elements in the parts of the book dealing with Isabelle have a one-dimensionality that put me in mind of the zeal of the newly converted. This being a novel, its handling is perhaps more a problem of technique than of political or social subtext, although well-motivated reasoning tends to carry more weight than random claims. (The narrative's position on slavery in Tuareg society, for example, is very defensive and dismisses any debate.) The elegiac passion for the Berber and Tuareg cause that infuses the book eventually, in the plot involving Isabelle, ramps up from an appeal to respect and preserve a civilisation in trouble to a finale so crammed with clumsy information dumping that plot temporarily disappears into a political manifesto.

By contrast, Mariata’s storyline virtually bursts with colour and joy of storytelling. Full of exhilarating twists and turns, of passion and strength and drama, it exudes everything that is fun, touching, and satisfying about the best commercial fiction. With outward stoicism and internal fire, Mariata never gives up. She finds inspiration in her noble ancestor, and fights tooth and nail for her dreams and those she loves. No humiliation or injustice she experiences ever induces her to feel inferior or unworthy. In every way that matters to her she is a free woman, the opposite of Isabelle who feels trapped every way except financially. Remarkably, Mariata’s independence is no mere fictional invention by an author caught up in romantic fantasies about Tuaregs. More about this further down.

The fluency with which Johnson weaves complex social, political, and cultural strands together in The Salt Road is one of the novel's most notable achievements. To get an idea of what this entails it is worth taking a moment to condider the socio-political context for the story. The following is my beginner’s attempt to summarise points that have bearing on Johnson’s narrative. Please note, however, that the interpretation is my own, not an account of views or opinions expressed in the novel.

Particularly in the last half century Berber (pl. Imazaghen, sing. Amazigh) identity in western North Africa (Tamazgha/Maghreb) has been suppressed by a cultural and political system of domination referred to as Arabisation. The problem is not with Islam, which has been adopted by many Berbers, including Tuaregs (there are Jewish and Christian Berbers, too). Historically, Arabs are relative newcomers (late 7th century) to an area inhabited by ethnically-varied, non-Semitic indigenous peoples collectively known as Berbers. Berber assimilation of a long line of foreign conquerors (Romans, Vandals, Christian Eastern Romans (i.e. Byzantines), Arab Bedouins, French, and Spanish) ultimately led to a situation where the Berber language (dialects grouped together as Tamasheq/Tamazight) and customs became treated as if their practitioners were a minority. For example, it was only in 2003 that Morocco officially approved the teaching of Tamazight in schools. The written form of the language, Tifinagh, has been a contested issue as some Moroccan groups have pushed for Tamazight to be taught using the Arabic or Latin alphabet instead. Arabic is still the only official language of the country in spite of estimations that Tamazight is in fact spoken by around half the population.

Among the most marginalised are the Tuaregs, that is, Berbers who nomadised the Sahara. Once powerful trans-Saharan traders of luxury goods and slaves, travelling caravan routes (such as the Salt Road) from north-western Africa to cosmopolitan towns along the Mediterranean, they are now among the poorest groups in North Africa. Romanticised in the West as the noble and mystical Blue People, caught up in conflicts with Saharan governments in a deadly morass of mutual accusations of racism, violent persecution, and barbarism, one of few things that seem to be agreed upon by outsiders is that Tuareg numbers have dwindled (estimates range from about one to three million). Desertification, including severe droughts in the twentieth century, as well as the imposition of border controls that disrupt nomadism, have done their part in causing migration to urban areas. Even so, some observers detect small signs of revival, noting that it is an ancient and hardy culture capable of intelligent adjustment.

These tensions colour the narrative in The Salt Road and contribute to its rich, authentic feel, particularly in Mariata’s storyline. For example, Tuareg customs and the nobility of her maternal heritage support Mariata’s independence. It is a partially matrilinear society in which status is inherited through the maternal line and women have no obligation to wear veils (links to an interesting but dated article, so read with caution) but modesty and respect require men to cover their faces. Women own and dispose over their own property, and retain custody of their children after divorce, which they can initiate. Johnson shows them doing this and more, including choosing their own husbands, for example, and that before marriage, if done discreetly, it is acceptable for girls to have lovers. It is modern society, including the pressure of institutionalised religion, that threatens to take these rights and privileges away from Mariata by diminishing the status of women in Tuareg society.

Mariata’s poetry illustrates the prominence of women in Tuareg oral traditions and music (the Imzad, a single-stringed violin, is reserved for female musicians). Incidentally, I was amused to discover, in Art Of Being Tuareg (see books of related interest, below), which contains a chapter each on poetry and music, to find a poem in which a woman by the same name is mentioned: “Manta and Halban of the long braids/and Mariata, beloved by the young/is frugal with herself, with that which pleases”. The description fits.

Meanwhile, Taïb represents the sedentary Berber. Surprisingly, although he is a principal character and Isabelle’s eventual love interest, we learn less about his background than about many secondary and minor characters. An international businessman, he carries on the traditions of his Tuareg forebears, but as an urban dweller his knowledge of his nomadic heritage is vague and theoretical, not practical. Unlike the Tuareg characters, he and several other citified Berbers are known to the reader only by their first names, not their lineage (ag (son of) [father], ult (daughter of) [mother]) or family name. It may be intended to symbolise how cut off or alienated they are from their heritage, but in Taïb’s case it also accentuates the slenderness of his characterisation.

As Isabelle’s de facto guide, Taïb lacks flavour and individuality. In fact, I would argue that the way he is used, or rather unused, makes his presence in the story superfluous. If one were to replace him with one or more stock characters of either sex who air the same generic sentiments and let them drift, like he does, in and out around the periphery of the plotline, the trajectory of Isabelle’s development and the outcome of the mystery would remain substantially unaffected. Whatever your genre of fiction, literary or popular, if you have a mission to inform or educate readers, you either need, at a minimum, to carefully explore events that illustrate the point you are trying to make, or create characters whose personal struggles embody the issue. Mariata is a case in point of successful application of this principle; Taïb, the pallid opposite. An intermediary who facilitates Isabelle’s interactions with more creatively imagined characters who unlike him actually hold clues and answers and do things that drive the plot forward, he seems there primarily to allow a pretty bow to be tied around the resolution of Isabelle’s storyline.

Even there, however, as the couple of a “love builds bridges where there are none”-romance - if the perfunctory development of a romantic subplot so nebulous can be called that - the two fail to convince. Worse, the flimsiness weakens the persuasiveness of Isabelle’s storyline. Putting Isabelle really on her own in Morocco could have forced something more interesting out of her, or, alternatively, giving her an active, insightful partner or other intelligent foil could have resulted in real conflict that demonstrates issues of colonisation, exploitation, and marginalisation. But instead of a romance that deepens characterisation and interaction that forces debate we are stuck with two people who rather than communicate spout preachy slogans or combative opinions in snapshot fashion. It was difficult for me to grasp what exactly Taïb admires or respects in a woman who protests, complains, distrusts, and shies away from everything that is new or unexpected to her – and as an ignorant, impatient first-time tourist in Morocco, possessed of a petulant nature, who puts herself at the mercies of local strangers, that pretty much encompasses every moment of every day. It was equally unclear to me why Isabelle falls for this particular man, not merely for his culture.

Then again, none of the male characterisations in The Salt Road reach anywhere near the substance or complexity of Johnson’s female creations, even the secondary ones. This story belongs to its women, young and old. (Belief in spirits has a prominent place in the culture the story explores, and that is what the male characters often resembled: wraith-like creatures in a world of wonderfully real, strong-willed women.) Even so, The Salt Road is deeply romantic in its approach to the place of love in a person’s life and its healing effect. Rather than taking the customary approach of condensing romance/love to specific courtship/family scenes, the author often makes its effect come vibrantly (and touchingly) through in character attitudes to the tribulations that buffet their lives and the strength they find in hope.

Jane Johnson is a happy author discovery for me. With The Salt Road she has crafted literate entertainment that excites the senses even as it informs. In other words, pure wish fulfillment for armchair travellers. Still, whereas the fascinating descriptions of Tuareg life, the careful unfolding of intense private dramas, and the poignant puzzle all crackle with storytelling vigour, if you are of the opinion that details bog down a story and you primarily require a snappy tempo and flashy mystery, then this may not be the book for you. The thoughtful but interest-filled pace echoes the musings of an elderly character in the novel: “all stories have their own way of being told and can never be hurried” (page 288). The Salt Road heeds the advice, and I am glad that it does.

*Tuareg (sing. Targuia (f), Targui (m)) is the most widely used term for groups of people who call themselves Kel Tamasheq (The Free People), Kel Tagelmust (People Of The Veil), or Imazaghen (Berber). While the origins of ‘Tuareg’ may be pejorative, Jane Johnson uses the term as a modern shorthand.

A lengthy excerpt from The Salt Road (chapter five) can be read at Johnson’s website. It introduces the reader to Mariata and is an excellent representation of the author’s style.

Non-fiction of related interest: The inclusion of works in French in the appended reading list in The Salt Road reflects the relative scarcity of quality printed sources and Internet articles in English, a difficulty I encountered when researching links for this post. The blog Tuareg Culture And News comments on the proliferation of popular myths in the media and recommends The Pastoral Tuareg: Ecology, Culture, and Society (Carlsberg Nomad Series) by Johannes Nicolaisen and Ida Nicolaisen as “the most authoritative, comprehensive ethnography on Tuareg culture in English” despite the fact that its original publication dates back to 1963 (latest printing by Thames and Hudson, 1997). Since that post, however, Tuareg Society Within A Globilized World: Saharan Life In Transition (Tauris, 2010) edited by Anja Fischer (German site, but lots of photos) and Ines Kohl has been released. The publishers claim “this book is the first comprehensive study of the Tuareg today”. The apparent companion book to a noted exhibition, Art Of Being Tuareg: Sahara Nomads In A Modern World, receives at least one mixed review: “the title is not only ethnocentric, it is misleading: The book is not really about today's nomadic Tuareg in the Sahara. It is rather a book about sedentary silversmiths, their families, and their crafts in a place called Agadez, Republic of Niger”. The reviewer goes on to points out that “In their foreword, Thomas K. Seligman (interview), director of the Cantor Arts Center, and Marla C. Berns, director of the UCLA Fowler Museum, thank Hermès, the famed French couture house, for its support. Hermès, as a global player, is commissioning silver pieces from silversmiths in Agadez for the Paris-based fashion house. This is a positive development, as it provides skilled craftsmen with a secure income. In practice, however, the silversmiths are dependent on some French intermediaries who do the designs and who have established ties with Hermès. Another problematic story concerns the printing of images of classic Berber jewelry and Tuareg leather bags on Hermès silk scarves. Are they "Tuareg-inspired designs," (p. 265) or are they copies of Tuareg designs, taken, and reproduced for Hermès' commercial benefit? Does Hermès pay any copyright fees to the Tuareg community?” I have quoted this part of the review in full because there are tangents to characters and developments in The Salt Road. An important secondary character is a smith (enad), and this person's arts and craftmanship play an interesting role in the novel. But the novel’s last chapter also makes positive mention of another character’s “thriving trade in commissioned artefacts for the American and European collectors’ market”, and there is no commentary that would address the concerns raised by the reviewer of Art Of Being Tuareg. Finally, a comprehensive, non-analytical summary and brief review note of The Tuaregs: The Blue People by Karl-G. Prasse concludes that this book serves as a useful general introduction; it is also one of the sources listed by Johnson.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

A delightful combination of chick-lit-style road adventure and fictionalised travelogue, Footprints In The Sand by Sarah Challis is the next best thing if you are unable to throw on your backpack and head for Africa this instant.

Feeling vague about Mali? If the mention of Tuaregs, a music festival in the desert, Dogon masks, or the world’s largest earthen building (in the UNESCO world heritage site of Djenné) don’t ring a bell, remember the villainous Edgar of Aristocats who was shipped off to Timbuktu? Much too good a fate for him, if you ask me. Hopefully, as it did for one of the protagonists of Footprints In The Sand, Mali inspired a life-changing epiphany.

When cantankerous, Harrods-loving Great-Aunt Mary dies, her will tasks two twenty-something relatives, cousins Emily and Clemmie Kingsley, with a mission that stuns the Dorset farming family: scatter her ashes in the Malian portion of the Sahara desert.

Clemmie is enchanted by the prospect of the adventure of a lifetime, but Emily balks. Miserable in the wake of her breakup from an unfaithful boyfriend, the last thing she wants is to chase another illusion. Nobody has ever heard of the location Great-Aunt Mary’s will mentions, nor suspected she had any connection to Africa: what if the eccentric idea was an attack of senility? Beryl Timmis, Mary’s companion, is of no help in puzzling out the mystery; silently she hopes nothing will come of the affair. But Clemmie overcomes every objection, and as her best friend, Emily reluctantly gives in. Now the only question that remains is how they will hunt down a place that does not exist on any map – and in the process of unravelling Mary’s secret, try to figure out the unspoken responsibilities of friendship.

As I devoured Footprints In The Sand, mental images from a completey unrelated film kept popping up in my head. The snappy, humorous exchanges between optimistic idealist Clemmie and practical skeptic Emily reminded me of girlfriends Mary McCormack and Minnie Driver in the British crime-comedy High Heels And Low Lifes. (Driver and McCormack have great chemistry, the quirky-never-a-dull-moment plot and dialogue crackle with energy and fun, and the ending is sassily upbeat. Just thinking about that film makes me grin.) The dynamic between the women, the British origin of both film and book, the pursuit of a madcap undertaking, and the positive focus on female friendship are probably the only similarities between book and film. Except that in my head, Emily and Clemmie now look and talk like Driver and McCormack (and yes, I realise the latter is American).

Footprints In The Sand starts out rather conventionally, but the chatty warmth and immediacy of the narrative style kept me entertained until the story gathered steam with the revelation of Great-Aunt Mary’s request. Despite the mystery at its heart, the plot is on the thin side, yet absorbing and not entirely predictable. What propelled me to turn the pages with unflagging curiosity were the quixotic nature of the mission, the character revelations, the emotional secrets, and the fascination of discovering Mali. Sarah Challis’s flair for painterly metaphors and illuminating detail are a joy and proved a saving grace when the cousins’ road trip from Bamako (Mali’s capital) temporarily strayed into the territory of enthusiastic travelogue.

The front cover of my edition of Footprints In The Sand has the following line: What happens when you finish someone else’s journey? The inner journeys of the characters parallel the cousins’ travel expedition. At the same time, this is not a new age tale replete with mystical life lessons. Emily and Clemmie’s personalities and their attitude to the country they are travelling through infuse the tone with breezy humour and self-irony, ensuring that moments of darker emotion never bog the story down in self-important melodrama. Any messages are left for the reader to infer.

The story is alternately narrated by Emily and Clemmie, with brief, at first seemingly random, but actually crucial insertions by Beryl Timmis. The two younger women’s casually confident voices are clearly distinct from the anxious strain of Beryl’s, whose account gradually develops into an unsettling counterpoint to the cousins’ adventure. In segments where plot development takes a back seat, their different outlooks provide a tension that kept me fully absorbed in the story.

Perceived by others as a timid spinster frightened of her own shadow, Beryl Timmis is treated with absent-minded indulgence. With Mary’s death and shock of a request, the past comes back to haunt Beryl. As Clemmie and Sarah travel to Africa, Beryl, now installed in a first-class retirement home thanks to Mary’s generosity, travels back in memory to the secrecy-laden turning point in her and Mary’s lives. Beryl’s internal monologue reveals a side of which others seem oblivious: self-pity centred around a selfish, critical kernel that retains little sweetness and only feigned dottiness. Gradually, through memories she has unsuccessfully tried to repress, an increasingly disturbing picture emerges. While Clemmie and Emily literally journey through sunshine, Beryl’s fears in winter-gloomy England lurk like chill shadows at the edges of the main tale.

Clemmie is Beryl’s opposite. Bubbling with enthusiasm, she sees the best in every person and finds the silver lining in any situation. In England, she has been drifting through life without clear focus, not unhappy, but dreaming of something special that will show her what life should be about. Her acceptance of the here and now makes her more easily contented than Emily, and her open nature seems to invite miracles. Situations Emily suffers through with boredom or worry are just as likely to be sources of meditative reflection and serenity for Clemmie.

Emily views her cousin’s impetuousness with a mix of grumpy exasperation and sisterly fondness. An elementary school teacher who is struggling to come to terms with her breakup with a longtime boyfriend, she sees the trip not as an adventure but a series of challenges, and is repeatedly on the brink of resigning herself to the potential failure of their mission. The Sahara desert tests her to the extreme, and the question becomes whether history will repeat itself.

A strong theme evolves through the contrasting and complementing friendships of Mary and Beryl versus Emily and Clemmie: even well-meaning meddling with an individual’s power to choose her/his own way can kill a spirit and give rise to a lifetime of regrets.

Mali transforms the cousins’ perception of the world and of themselves, and their meeting with locals who become guides and friends turn their unconventional task into something resembling a pilgrimage. While Challis’s admiration for the country (which she has personally visited) is evident and she pokes gentle fun at Western tourists, she deftly avoids the cliché of painting the place as an African Shangri-La. Footprints In The Sand is not interested in offering an analysis of cultural otherness (at least not directly; it is discoveries of sameness that most often fascinate the two women). Even so, while the story may not dive very deeply beneath the surface glamour of exotic travel – rough-and-ready though the actual mode of travel may be – Emily and Clemmie do experience an uncomfortable awareness of the exploitative side of tourism in a poor country. “I did not enjoy being a sightseer and neither did Emily. With nothing to offer, nothing to give, we were just gawpers from another world.” (Page 269.)

My enjoyment of Footprints In The Sand was such that few flaws bothered me. As different as Beryl’s voice is from those of Clemmie and Emily, this difference was liable to evaporate when it came to certain instances of descriptive imagery. Instead of Beryl’s fussy negativity, Clemmie’s cheerful optimism, or Emily’s skepticism, I would suddenly hear the author being unable to resist inserting a particularly labored-over passage whether or not it fit the character’s thought pattern or voice. Each time it happened I was pulled out of the character’s head for a moment.

One thing remained unclear to me at the conclusion of the story. I can only try to guess at why Mary selected Clemmie and Emily rather than someone else from the large Kingsley clan. Perhaps the cousins’ friendship inspired Mary to try to write a new ending for the past? Perhaps she wanted to open up the truth in the hope that someone might finally understand her, someone who might gain something equally life-changing from it? I don’t know, but neither does it matter much to me since it detracts nothing essential from the story.

Finally, I have seen some otherwise satisfied readers grumble about the ending being “sappy” or “silly”. Those less allergic to romantic story elements should be aware that the romance that occurs is an end result – the expression of a spiritual (as distinct from religious) homecoming – not a subplot.

Footprints In The Sand was recommended by Mog, and I am so glad I listened! Reading it proved an undiluted pleasure and the most charming armchair trip I took all summer.

Excerpt

(Headline Review, paperback, 2007, page 86-88):

“Although I had agreed to go to Mali with her, there was still one conversation I felt we had to have.

‘Okay, Clem,’ I said, taking a deep breath, ‘let’s get this clear from the start. If we get out there and find that we can’t make contact with this man of Great-Aunt Mary’s, this Salika person, then that is it. We find a suitable place to scatter the old girl and we call it a day. I’m not going wandering off on our own in the Sahara. You’ve got to know what you are doing in an environment like that and you’ve got to be with people you can trust. I looked up Mali on the Foreign Office travel advice page this afternoon. Look at this!’ I handed her a printed sheet and waited while she skimmed through it.

‘I know all this,’ she said airily, handing it back. ‘Will told me. But they always exaggerate, don’t they? They try and put you off going anywhere but the New Forest or a coach tour of the Lake District.’

I picked up the sheet and read out, ‘Because of increased risk of banditry and kidnap we advise against travel to the north of Timbuktu. Bandits and smugglers across the borders of Mali, Mauritania, and Algeria constitute a real risk to travellers, especially after dark.’

Clemmie had picked up a hand mirror and was studying an imaginary spot on her face, refusing to meet my eye. Instead she said, ‘Emily! Pick up that free local paper on the table. What’s that on the front page? Muggings? A rape? In one week, and in this neighbourhood alone. London is a million times more dangerous than Mali, where crime levels are actually really low. It says so if you read on a bit. Anyway,’ she said, putting down the mirror and looking at me brightly, ‘wouldn’t it be blissful to be kidnapped by those camel men? It would beat teaching, wouldn’t it?’

I shook my head. Sometimes Clemmie’s remarks are too silly to merit an answer. On the other hand, she was probably expressing her real opinion. It would be typical of her to think that it would be exciting to be kidnapped.

‘It would be a big mistake on their part,’ I said. ‘Who do you think would pay the ransom? I can’t see the Kingsleys forking out to get us back.’

‘Isn’t it said,’ said Clemmie, ‘to be so superfluous?’”

A book of related interest: As far as I have been able to find out, Clive Cussler’s Sahara was published in 1992, the year Mali was holding its first democratic presidential election. Thus its description of a fictional dictatorship instantly dated the novel, as do the descriptions of violent rule and rampant corruption. USAid now considers Mali one of the most stable countries in Africa. With that it mind, Sahara (and its film adaptation) becomes a book best read as a fantasy adventure rather than a tale grounded in reality.

Edited to add (13 June 2011): An intriguing romantic novel also set in the Sahara, The Salt Road by Jane Johnson takes a much closer look at Tuaregs. I have posted about it here.

The Romantic Armchair Traveller

Danielle C. tours the globe through romantic fiction, including romance novels. You are welcome to comment on any post at any time. While I strive to respond to each comment, a delay of a few days may occasionally occur.